Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/122

West Indies, a few leaders may be found, who appear among their countrymen, a kind of lusus naturæ, that more forcibly point out their general degradation; in fine, we may as well affirm, that education would give to the cart-horse the spirit of a courser, or to the cur the sagacity of the hound, as that it would give to the negro the talents and abilities of the European. But though nature may deny to the sons of Africa the degree of mental light which illuminates the western world, she has not totally forbidden them a participation in its benign influence. Nature surely never intended to create,

———Wretches born to work and weep
Explore the mine,

or, in short, to become the absolute property of other men; though she has not